


We've Done This Before (The On A Clear Day Remix)

by Jakowic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 00:03:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17714216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jakowic/pseuds/Jakowic
Summary: Harry spends most of his day entertaining a cat and a grumpy Slytherin. So it's like entertaining two cats, really.





	We've Done This Before (The On A Clear Day Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [On a Clear Day](https://archiveofourown.org/works/879841) by [Saras_Girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saras_Girl/pseuds/Saras_Girl). 



> i was asked to answer prompt 24 (“You’re the only one I trust to do this.”) on a tumblr prompt challenge thing. 
> 
> for my friend, Diya. mucho love my dear

Harry’s socked feet slide against the wooden tiles of his kitchen, pace rapid-fire switching from sleepy to hurried as Nimh yowls, tangling her body with his ankles. 

“You’re not a famine victim,” he admonishes her even as he pours a little extra into her bowl. Straightening, he casts a Tempus and realises that it is, in fact, just past four p.m. and Draco is late. “Bloody Slytherins,” he mutters. The pettiness of the statement is left unappreciated, alone except for the company of his cat. 

He wanders to the front room, stares at the heavy floral drapes and considers drawing them for a moment for no other reason than to look up and down the street for Draco, but he hasn’t drawn his curtains in ages and decides, wand dangling uselessly from his fingertips, that he’d really rather not. This house, the one he’s chosen to lock himself inside, is chock full of ghosts and memories half-buried beneath dust.

Harry spends a lot of time these days going through boxes, piecing together parts of Sirius’ life, collecting little scraps of stories of the other erased Black family members. He’d had Hermione and Ron help remove the portrait in the hall, the stench of Dark magic hasn’t completely deserted that part of the house, an angry black charred mark stained permanently where she had been, then told them to bugger off and live life, he’d do the rest. 

He hasn’t done much, these days, mostly spends his nights and days wandering number 12, Nimh trailing him, silent and pale, like a ghost where he’s supposed to be living. Standing morosely, staring at nothing, it takes a couple of minutes for Harry to register the familiar three-part knock.

“You’re late,” Harry accuses crossly when he yanks open the door. 

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, shuffling past Harry and undoing his coat at the same time. He genuinely sounds it, too. 

Draco dumps his coat and scarf unceremoniously on Harry’s coatrack, beelining for the kitchen, grabbing the gelato container off the counter, knowing without asking that it’s for him, that Hermione brought it over, and knowing that Harry left it to thaw for him. He reaches for Harry’s spoons and digs in, aware that it’s already gone cookie-dough soft.

“Didn’t keep you long, did I?” he asks around the spoon. 

Harry sneers at him. “Thought Malfoys were brought up with manners.”

Draco shrugs. “You don’t exactly inspire extreme cleanliness.”

Harry shrugs back, hoping his expression is sharp and mocking, but suspects he only lands somewhere around vaguely fond. Draco’s eyes crinkle at the corners, and he winces, hard, when he leans against the counter. Harry tilts his head at him.

“You okay?” he asks.

He’s never asked before, but they’re friends now, or – sort of. Something. Harry doesn’t trust anyone these days, but eventually, he’d had to give in. Draco used to sit outside on his porch, looking all sorts of miserable, last dredges of February snow settling on his shoulders and melting in his eyelashes. He was the Daily Prophet’s last resort, every other reporter and newswriter thrown firmly away when Harry’s front door had launched fireballs at them. All except Draco, who’d just stepped neatly to the side and gazed long-sufferingly up at Harry’s shuttered windows and yelled that he knew that Potter was hiding, and what, is he a coward now, he who faced the Dark Lord won’t even answer his front door.

Draco was meant to gather material on him for the new wireless show that the Prophet runs on the radio. He hasn’t said anything about Harry. Harry would know, he listens to it, the neat mish-mash of Muggle and Wizard pop, to soothing classical at night. He likes Draco’s morning show the best, he runs it with a muggle-born called Mark with a slow American drawl and wit just as quick as Draco’s, enjoys listening to them sniping at each other while reading the weather and other trashy celebrity stories.

“You should meet him,” Draco had remarked once, in the early days, standing by Harry’s dead fireplace, shivering. “He’d like you, and Mark doesn’t like anybody.”

Harry hadn’t said no way back then, and he won’t say yes now. Since then Ron and Hermione had started building a tentative relationship with Draco, by dropping by and exchanging books and various gossip, mostly about Ministry folk, all of them that Draco remembers. Molly still makes Draco wildly uncomfortable, so does Ginny, but she’s with Blaise now, so Harry suspects he sees her much more than any of the other Weasleys. 

He doesn’t think of her much these days, what with almost eight years behind them. She comes by once in awhile, red-cheeked and grinning, and Harry’ll hug her and take the bread from her arms and congratulate her on making her way in the Quidditch world while Hermione eyes him warily over the top of her coffee mug.

They’re worried for him, they don’t say, staying locked up and hating the idea of exposing himself, his screwed up head, to the disappointment of the whole world. Draco has, at least, started to attempt to establish something normal in Harry’s life, dropping by every day and just… talking. It hadn’t been like that after Harry had first let him in, snappish and tense and Harry’s magic had crackled so brightly you could taste it in the air, scrape your fingernails against the wooden boards of the wall and come away feeling electric.

“I’m fine,” Draco says, too late to be convincing. 

“Okay,” Harry says slowly, hoisting himself up onto the counter next to the stove. He swings his feet, heels banging against the cupboard. “Tell me what kept you, then.”

“Someone’s stealing from my coffee stash,” Draco answers immediately. “Someone who runs the evening show. I’m investigating,” he adds imperiously, top lip smeared with chocolate.

Harry smiles, indulgent. “I’m sure. Who did you run into on the way here?”

Draco pauses, eyes widening minutely. Harry’s smile stretches into a grin, delighted his guess had been right, probably not doing anything to discourage the suspicion Draco has that Harry might be a Seer.

He looks away, down at Nimh who rubs her tabby-cat hair all over the ankles of Draco’s trousers, wiping the smudge away with his thumb. “Nobody,” he mumbles.

Harry leaves it, deciding he won’t push where he’s not wanted to push. Suggests he’ll read some James Bond aloud, tatty copies Ron left when Harry had first started complaining of boredom and simultaneously expressing worrying amounts of venom towards the telly. Draco says yes, looking relieved.

They curl up in front of Harry’s fireplace, still coated with dark ash. Harry settles on the plush rug, cracks open the spine of Goldfinger, one they’ve read before, and falls into the familiar cadence of the words. Draco’s laying on his back on the sofa, stroking Nimh, who’s lounging on Draco’s stomach. When Harry catches sight of them, Draco’s eyes closed, Nimh purring as he strokes her, the knuckles of his other hand dragging against the carpet, mismatched socked feet tucked against the armrest, Harry’s voice stutters and falls away.

Draco cracks open an eye and catches Harry staring at him, dry-mouthed and heart beating too fast.

“Lord, Potter, you look like you’re having gas,” he says.

Harry pulls a face immediately. “Charming.”

“You think so,” Draco says, turning away and making himself more comfortable. “Come on, then. We’re not even at the good part.”

–

It’s four a.m., five a.m., some undesirable time when Harry wakes, shooting up in bed, heart in his throat, blood rushing in his veins. There are items in his room floating about, magic gone haywire with whatever panic his dream was. It’s pouring outside, he realizes, the heavy torrent-slash-hurricane outside momentarily drowned out by his own panting, and Harry times his breaths with the beat of the wind knocking something around outside. 

Distantly, Harry hears Nimh yowl and screech downstairs. He sighs out, savours the warmth of his bed before he gets up and putters down the stairs, sticking his glasses on his face and casting Lumos at the same time.

He freezes, horrified, in the pitch-black of his sitting room when he hears the faint three-part knock Draco uses, and Nimh meows, desperate, in response. Harry almost trips over her and the carpet in the entryway, trying to get the door open. Late night visits have always been bad, and eight years haven’t washed away the memory of living in constant terror. He throws it open and Draco tumbles in, groaning. Harry catches him before he hits the ground.

He’s soaking wet and Harry’s door immediately becomes a puddle, Harry struggling to drag Draco inside and close the door at the same time.

“Ugh,” Draco murmurs, and that’s when Harry sees the blood.

He doesn’t freeze, even though he’s never been good at seeing his friends in pain (Ron, on the ground in the forest, groaning with incoherence, fingers searching blindly for Harry or Hermione or both, skin stark white, freckles a sick, sharp contrast, flashes in his mind). He kicks the door shut and manages, somehow, to drop Draco onto the sofa and peel off his blood-stained, rainwater-soaked coat.

Draco shivers, lips blue, white shirt almost all the way red, hair plastered to his forehead. Harry gives up and finally, after years gone unused, lights a fire in the grate and kneels down in front of Draco, gently casting warming charms.

“What the fuck,” Harry says. “Why aren’t you at Saint Mungo’s?”

“D-d-don’t,” Draco tries and Harry shushes him. “I don’t want,” he says, stubbornly, “a-a-any-anyone but you. You’re the only one I trust to-to-to do this.”

Harry’s hands slow on the buttons of Draco’s shirt, helping him shrug it off so he can see. The skin on his back is the worst, stripped raw, tiny little pinpricks that have blood gathering at their opening. It looks like he was poked all over with a needle, deep enough and hard enough to draw blood, enough to satisfy someone with a problem.

“Okay, okay,” Harry whispers to himself, braces his palm against Draco’s knee and casts all the healing charms Ron taught him, back when Ron started Healer training. 

Draco hisses, sharp and painful, digs one of his hands into Harry’s shoulder, like he wants to push him away and pull him closer at the same time, unsure which to pick. Nimh meows, soft and curious, trekking across the back of the sofa.

When Harry finishes, done the best he can, he makes Draco wear one of his too-big Weasely sweaters, puts him in drawstring pants and makes him sleep in Harry’s bed. He’s too wired to sleep, so he stands in his kitchen for hours, sipping the same mug of coffee, watching his Tempus charm tick from the wee hours of the morning to the afternoon, blood gone angry, magic crackling in his hands, flinging all the ceramic pots on his neighbour’s windowsill to the concrete below. Harry times his breaths with the sound of the terracotta hitting the ground.  _Crack, crack, smash_.

–

Draco comes downstairs half-way between noon and afternoon, looking pale and sallow – and that’s saying something. Draco hasn’t eaten much in the years after Hogwarts, gotten notoriously bad at taking care of himself, doesn’t look like a healthy weight.

“You look like shit,” Harry says instead of all the things he wants to say.  _You’re alive, I’m glad_  and  _you have no idea how worried I am_  and  _I thought we were friends, what’s going on, please tell me_.

Draco says, “Smells like there’s a hypocrite living in your skin, Potter.”

Which, okay, fine, maybe.

Draco’s eyes are cautious, movement slow and careful, like he’s trying not to startle a wild deer. Harry should be treating  _him_  like this, Harry ain’t the one that showed up in the middle of the night, half-frozen and soaked in blood and sky-jizz.

Harry pushes a plate of bacon sandwiches toward him, kept under a warming charm, and waits for Draco to finish eating before he asks, “So what happened?”

Draco shrugs.

Harry sighs, looks up at the ceiling. “Look,” Harry says. “I’d really like you to tell me.”

“Okay,” Draco says, slight reluctance at the base of his vocal chords. 

“Because, you know, we’re friends now, or–” Harry stops. “Wait. Really? Okay?”

Draco sighs. “I probably should’ve told you sooner.”

Harry keeps his vehement agreement inside, stomps it down with the rest of the speech he’d spent those hours alone rehearsing. 

“I mean, there’s this group of guys that loiter in Diagon Ally, just outside where I work, you know. They don’t like me, understandably, I think they were veterans or,” Draco shrugs. “Sometimes they follow me. Cast stinging hexes, calling out rubbish. It’s distasteful, especially since I did, you know, apologize.”

Harry remembers, sometime in March, figuring out the crochet needles, the way his lungs dropped to his knees when Draco, twenty-one, tired and just starting to re-learn who Harry Potter is, went on air and talked about his involvement with Voldemort. 

Mark, who hadn’t grown up here, seemed rather surprised at the story, murmuring, “You never had a problem with me.”

Draco, saying, “People grow up, life goes on. Either you accept it or you end up with part of yourself locked up. You get stagnant, fall out of the loop of life.”

They’d fought that day, like they were back at school, hard and childish and Harry’s magic filling the house to the brim with the taste of iron, pissed that Draco would say that on the air, Draco snapping waspishly that neither of them had realized that they were still on the air, that maybe the reason Harry was taking it so personally because it was true.

Almost four years ago now, Harry thinks with some surprise.

“I was heading in early, I was going catch the coffee thief. There were more than usual,” Draco laughs, sardonic. “I didn’t hear them over the sound of the rain.”

–

Harry’s heart stutters painfully, standing in between the door and the concrete steps leading to the sidewalk, reminding himself he doesn’t have to go, he doesn’t have to listen to the fury that sets in his chest.

But Harry’s always wanted to avenge the people he loves, always been stopped by people more sensible than him, forced to let emotion wash over like waves crashing over more waves in an ocean. He thinks of Sirius here, with a pang, then Remus and Dumbledore.

That’s what makes him take his first steps out, flipping the hood of Hermione’s Oxford hoodie over his head, drawing Sirius’ old leather jacket tighter around his shoulders, tucking his hands in the pockets of his denims and quickens his pace. It’s eleven p.m. so Harry passes almost completely unnoticed, and no one who sees him recognizes him or cares.

He draws up to them, four guys leaning against the concrete brick building of the robe dry cleaner’s across from the wireless building where Draco runs his show. Harry recognizes it from Hermione’s description, she’d come in excited the day after guest starring, half-giddy and half-patronizing, saying Harry ought to visit it, isn’t it such a nice place. 

Harry takes off the hood and tilts his head. It doesn’t take them long to notice him, takes them a nanosecond to recognize his scar.

“Hi,” Harry says, false cheer, conversationally. “My name’s Harry Potter. From what I understand, there’s a man from over there,” Harry waves vaguely behind him. “He’s got a Death Eater mark. His name is Draco Malfoy.”

The guys glance at each other nervously.

“What’s he gotta do with us?” one of the blokes asks bravely.

Harry flashes a smile that isn’t friendly at all. “You touch him again and you won’t get a second warning. If you fought in the war, if you remember what it felt like,” Harry shakes his head. “I didn’t fight for this, reckon you didn’t really, either. I don’t care about your petty revenge. Voldemort righted wrongs with violence. We don’t do that. He doesn’t deserve to be hurt.

“And besides,” Harry calls over his shoulder as he turns away, “people grow up. Life goes on.”

When he gets home the door is ajar, and he can hear Draco’s voice talking to Nimh, pitched low, and she meows anxiously, reacting to his pacing. Harry pauses in the doorway and stares at him, hand rucking up his perfectly styled hair, waving his wand around. He calls Harry’s name once, into the air, like a hopeful question, like this isn’t the first time he’s asked.

“Yes?” Harry says, from the doorway. 

Draco spins to him, wand brandished, then relief breaks the scowl on his face and his eyes widen. “You’re outside,” he says.

“Astute observation skills,” Harry remarks, stepping inside and making sure the door’s locked when he closes it this time. “Those guys won’t bother you anymore.”

Harry watches as Draco rakes his eyes over Harry, cataloguing the dirt on his body, the reddened mark on his jaw, the flecks of blood on his knuckles. He’d punched one of the guys when they’d jeered after him, calling Draco purist scum. Hermione would deny that even now, these days. It’d not been pretty.

Draco meets his eyes again, bright and grateful, and he strides up to Harry, presses him into the doorway and kisses him. Harry makes a surprised sound, brain going offline at the first brush of Draco’s mouth against his. He’s cold from the night air but Draco is a hot, long line against his body. Unsure what to do with his hands, Harry clenches them at his sides, then puts them on Draco’s shoulders, wants to push him away and pull him closer at the same time, unsure which to pick.

Draco’s hand slides along his jaw, fingertips brushing the raw spot that’s sure to bruise later, angling Harry’s head as he kisses back, dizzy.

“Oh, hello,” Harry says, when Draco pulls away, hands sliding down to his waist, keeping him close.

“Hi,” Draco says back, smiling. Harry thinks of chocolate smeared on his top lip, thinks of  Draco curled up on his couch, of Draco wearing his jumper. 

“What’s this, then?” Harry can’t help but ask, even though he knows he’s smiling big enough to crack his face.

“This is me trusting you,” Draco says very seriously. “Like trusting the big scary world for an hour in order to punch someone.”

Harry nods, deciding to go with it. “I’m familiar with the metaphor.”

Draco laughs, a helpless little goose-honk sound that Harry had never imagined Draco could make when they were at school. Just for that, Harry decides to kiss him again.


End file.
